Free Wi-Fi v. Verizon Jetpack 4G LTE

Ken ChanApril 5, 2014

I’m sitting in the bleachers at a local ice skating rink on a Saturday morning wondering how fast the free Wi-Fi is. Speedtest.net reports the download speed as 1.25 Mbps and 0.35 Mbps as the upload speed. My experience is that the connection is perfect for reading text, but struggles with video.

Fortunately, I also have a Verizon Jetpack 4G LTE. In the belly of a concrete ice rink, Speedtest.net reports the download speed as 2.30 Mbps and the upload speed as 1.36 Mbps. That’s more than twice as good since the connection isn’t being shared. 😉

Obviously, the Verizon Jetpack 4G LTE experiences a bit of variance in performance depending on the location. At home, Speedtest.net reports a download speed of 4.41 Mbps and an upload speed of 0.56 Mbps. Strange that the download speed is faster than at the ice rink, but the upload speed is slower.

April 11, 2014 – At the gymnastics center, the download speed is a swift 11.49 Mbps and the upload speed is 0.87 Mbps. Quite a bit of variance.